01: What is a conscious self? Towards a theory of subjectivity and selfhood

Subjectivity is at the heart of current theories of about consciousness, in neuroscience as well as in philosophy of mind: What is a conscious self? What are the origins of the first-person perspective, and what exactly makes phenomenal experience a subjective phenomenon?
We will try to shed new light on the problem by combining approaches from philosophy of mind and cutting edge cognitive neuroscience. In the past, many different aspects of self-consciousness have been categorized and these aspects have been continuously refined and expanded, including many different sensory, emotional or cognitive layers. This has led to an excess of definitions, in the absence of a widely accepted model of self-consciousness that is based on empirical neurobiological data. More recent theories converge on the relevance of bodily self-consciousness, i.e., the non-conceptual representation and processing of body-related information, as one promising approach for the development of a comprehensive neurobiological model of self-consciousness, of grounding the phenomenal self-model (PSM).
We will then lay conceptual foundations for a minimal notion of phenomenal selfhood (MPS) while presenting the following data during our workshop, as we investigate behavioural and brain correlates of bodily self-consciousness, demonstrating the selective manipulation of self-location, first-person perspective, self-identification, and full-body agency.

(1) Neurological patients suffering from altered states of bodily self-consciousness such as so-called out-of-body experiences, autoscopic hallucinations and heautoscopy.
(2) The experimental manipulation of self-location and self-identification in healthy subjects using multisensory conflict and virtual reality technology.
(3) Neuroimaging data during experimentally altered states of bodily self-consciousness (self-location and self-identification) using virtual reality and robotics with high-resolution EEG.
(4) Neuroimaging data during experimentally altered states of bodily self-consciousness self-location, self-identification, and first-person perspective) using virtual reality and robotics with fMRI.
(5) The experimental manipulation of full-body agency in healthy subjects using temporal and spatial visuo- and audio-motor conflicts and virtual reality technology.

The workshop is aimed at participants with an interdisciplinary interest, from philosophy to psychology and cognitive science, as well as neuroscience.